What happens when people return to a community after incarceration? How do they look for work and housing? How do they manage their addictions or mental illness, and why do some return to prison?

In his talk, Western will bear witness to the lives held captive in Americas experiment with mass incarceration. Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison tells the stories of the men and women he met through the Boston Reentry Study, a series of interviews his research team conducted with people leaving prison for neighborhoods around Boston. They were trying to understand what happens when people return to a community, and the challenges faced by them and their families.

The research showed that imprisonment is followed by deep poverty, in which unemployment is widespread and survival is assisted only by government programs and family support. While earlier studies have focused on the stigma of a criminal record, the men and women of Boston also struggled greatly with human frailty  mental illness, addiction, and physical disability  that threatened success after incarceration and impaired the effectiveness of programs. They had experienced serious violence, often as perpetrators, but just as frequently as victims and witnesses, and often since early childhood. Under these conditions, freedom after prison was not a status granted by release, but something attained gradually. Becoming free was a process of social integration where one had to find ones place with kin and community. Justice in this world can be found more in the abatement of violent environments than in the punishment of violent people. Justice too, must involve the acknowledgement of harm; not just the harms that follow from crime, but also the harms that follow from punishment that are often heaped on the poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

Target audiences: Faculty, Students - Graduate

Open to audiences: Faculty, General Public, Staff, Students - Graduate, Students - Undergraduate